


Kryptonite

by blak_cat



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 13:36:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3211052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blak_cat/pseuds/blak_cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After forcing Carmilla to go to classes this semester, Laura is surprised to find her taking notes down in German. And just a little heartbroken when she finds out why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kryptonite

**Author's Note:**

> This is a headcanon I actually do a lot in the various fandoms I write for. This is something I have to deal with in life.

Laura dropped a fifth book into her green arm basket. She unfolded her list and looked at the next one: HIST 1275. Required readings: _Voices of the Past_ by Catalina Nilson and _Empirical History Through Modern Eyes_ by Josef Kahn. She groaned. The history section was hidden across the bookstore with a mob of tangled students forming a human wall between her and her last two books.

“Do you need anything from over here?” Laura turned to Carmilla.

Apparently she’d gotten rid of her basket earlier because it was no where to be seen. Nor were books, or list.

“Nope.”

“Carmilla.”

“It’s very stupid.”

“Yeah well, your mom isn’t dean anymore. You need to actually go to classes and do homework. Did you see the email from our European History professor? We have reading due the first day of class.”

“We have university email accounts?”

Laura groaned. Carmilla was frivolous with classes. She went when she thought it might be interesting, she only picked things she wanted to learn. She read on her own time. And every semester she did it all over again because her mother would let her get away with murder (literally) as well as F’s in every class.

And as much as Laura tried to impress upon her that she would need to earn her place at the university from here on out, the object permanence of it wasn’t really hitting Carmilla with too much weight. But, for a pair of big puppy dog eye, she sighed, rolled her eyes, and allowed herself to be dragged to the bookstore. 

“When we get back in you’re logging into the student center. You know your password right? Okay then, well you can always change your password,” Laura said. She readjusted her newly heavy and now awkwardly placed basket. 

Carmilla wordlessly took the basket from her and held it without complaint. 

“Poptart, I’m 335 years old. You’re not going to get me jumping in line just to do school again,” she said. 

“Did they even have school back in the 17th century?” Laura said. 

“Yes, God, it’s not like I’m from the Jurassic period,” Carmilla rolled her eyes and Laura giggled and gave her arm a good-natured squeeze. “We had tutors. A few days a week. In the morning it was Latin, then language arts, then in the afternoon it was history, literature and piano.”

“Piano?” Laura echoed. 

“It was considered very improper for a ranked lady not to be skilled in music,” Carmilla said. “As long as you didn’t even consider making a career of it of course.”

“Now that I think about it, you could probably teach this European History class.”

Carmilla stepped in front of Laura who quickly grabbed onto her arm as she was pulled mercilessly through the web of people who were not at all silent about the sudden shoving. Carmilla dragged them both back out the other side where Laura took a breath. 

“You’d be good in Disneyland,” Laura said.

“Don’t get any ideas.”

Laura scanned the stacks quickly, grazing the codes until she found HIST against the back wall. She headed forward and began scanning course numbers down the line until she unfortunately located the desired class on the top shelf. She felt herself go red as she huffed. 

Two options. One: be seen making an attempt at reaching it a failing, Carmilla will laugh. Two: Ask Carmilla for help, Carmilla will laugh. She thought about locating a stool to step up on but that might be even more embarrassing.

“Hey Carm?” she turned. Carmilla was already smirking. Laura wordlessly pointed up to the top shelf. 

“Anything for you, cupcake.”

She lazily stepped forward, Laura offered a hand to take the basket but Carmilla set on the floor and within two seconds, she realized why. Carmilla stepped less than an inch from her and gave an exaggerated reach for the book up top, smirk going wider when Laura let her eyes drift to exactly where Carmilla wanted them to go. 

Carmilla lowered both books so they were sitting right between them. 

“You’re looking a little hot and bothered, gummy bear,” she said. 

Laura snatched the books quickly and dropped them into the basket. Carmilla snorted above her as she rose with the most dignified look she could give through an impossibly warm face.

“Scowl all you want, that human biology wins every time,” Carmilla said as she stalked her way off. 

Laura felt Carmilla fall in step behind her and she was thankful when they reached the blockade in the middle again. Carmilla wordlessly took her hand and yanked her through, once again to the sounds of angry students and dropped books. They were whispering after them and that was worse. _There goes the girl who got her roommate killed but she freakily came back to life and now they’re dating like weirdos_. She didn’t mind hearing it around Carmilla, who was like an iron shield wrapped up in glares and everyone stayed quiet because they had a sneaking suspicion about what she was. But dealing with it alone in classes was going to be a chore. 

They stood in line for fifteen minutes before Laura groaned and dropped her forehead onto the incredibly solid counter and immediately regretted it. She forgot her wallet back in the dorm. 

“It’s on me, creampuff,” Carmilla said, without even being asked. She produced a surplus of Euros. 

“No, Carm,” Laura said before an elegant hand went up in her face.

“I’m the sole inheritor to a very large Swiss Bank account whose funds are older than most of Europe,” she said, pocketing her now empty wallet. 

Laura hid her cringe, it’s not that she didn’t like being treated to things by Carmilla (in fact she got giddy inside every time she was able to say the phrase “My girlfriend bought me dinner”, “My girlfriend covered me when I forgot my wallet”) but she hated feeling like a child in her eyes. 

“I didn’t know your family had a Swiss Bank account,” Laura said, as they exited the bookstore. Carmilla had the bag of books slung over her shoulder, her free hand took Laura’s as they walked. 

“All sorts of old money families started getting them in the 19th century. I’m the only one still alive with the code for it,” she said.

“They didn’t find that suspicious?” 

“Yes, because I walked in telling them I’m Mircalla Karnstein who is evidently not buried under her headstone at Zentralfiedhof.” 

Laura loved hearing Carmilla speak German. Sure French was sexy, and her Sumerian was fascinating, but nothing sounded better than Carmilla slipping into her true accent and rolling the words off her tongue. Even Perry and LaFontaine’s fluent German could never compare.

“Well thanks, I’ll make it up to you.”

“Oh _will_ you?”

Goddammit did she need to get that human biology under control. She hated the way Carmilla never blushed, the most flustered she ever looked was avoiding eye contact or shoving her face 400 pages deep in a copy of The Prince. And she had 316 years experience of flirting on Laura. 

Note to self: get better at it. 

\--

Laura was fairly certain the only classes Carmilla was actually going to were the ones they had together, which was all of two out of her 15 credit semester. Three times a week Carmilla lounged next to Laura in a giant lecture hall and fought of falling asleep by forcing Laura into games of tic-tac-toe. 

She did take notes, occasionally. But only on the few topics she knew surprisingly very little about. 

“What? I only pretend like I know everything,” she said when Laura gave her a look the first time she began jotting down dates and names. 

The rest of her notes though were unreadable to Laura because she took them in German. An entire page of long German words and umlauts made Laura’s head buzz every time she looked over while Carmilla was writing notes. 

“Wrong,” she whispered when the professor mentioned something about a French noble family. Whether or not she scribbled the fact down as the professor said or her own correct version, Laura was unsure because it was, as all the other notes, in German. 

However, in the philosophy class Laura took with Carmilla, she was fair more adamant about note taking. As they discussed Kant’s box, Camrilla feverishly spilled out notes across her page in her birth language. And it was the first time Laura found it annoying instead of cute. 

“I don’t think there is a universe in which I’m going to understand this,” Laura groaned, her face flat against her notebook on her desk. “How do you deal with this stuff?”

“I’ve had lots of time to think about it, cupcake,” she said, head tilting but eyes never leaving the page of _Metaphysics of Morals_. “I could try explaining it to you again.”

“For like the 15th time.”

“I don’t mind.” 

Carmilla marked her page and stood. From the space behind the bathroom door she dug out the easel and giant notepad, which still housed Danny and Laura’s notes from the beginning of their search for Betty. Carmilla placed the structure in the dead center of the room and carelessly ripped the page in Danny’s handwriting off. She threw it on the ground and failed at hiding her extra step on it for good measure. 

She drew a giant box. 

“Here’s everything,” she said, pointing to the box. 

“Everything?”

“Yes, literally all of it is right here.”

For emphasis she drew, inside the box, a cat stick figure and then another much shorter stick figure next to it. She also drew an abnormally tall stick figure that Laura assumed was Danny. Some others were thrown in, a rendition of her mother with devil horns, her brother received a very detailed treatment where he was dressed in a tee-shirt that said “I heart Mom.” 

“So, everything,” she concluded. “What Kant is saying, is that all sorts of crap we have no fucking clue about is floating around out here.” She pointed outside the box. 

“I’m sure, that’s exactly how he said it.”

“Which one of us was there?” 

Laura sighed. She looked expectantly at Carmilla to continue. 

“So, the walls of the box,” she ran the back of the pen along the borders of her rectangle. “Are these dumb barriers we can’t get through to understand all these other stuff.” 

Laura forced herself to pay attention to the words and not spend the entire study session marveling at just how animated Carmilla got when talking about this stuff. Every time Laura thought about it, it was usually along the lines of _oh of course the centuries old, morally ambiguous woman with an immortality complex is a philosophy major_. But in moments like this, specifically now that Carmilla was using her hands to gesture and point and talk in a more animated way than Laura had probably seen anyone ever talk (including herself), she realized Carmilla actually loved it. 

She loved thinking, loved being challenged. To someone who’s seen it all, having something new to piece together must have been like Christmas (if Carmilla enjoyed Christmas). 

“Have you been listening?” Carmilla tossed the marker square at Laura’s forehead. 

“Yes.” She rubbed her forward and shuffled to pick of the marker and tossed it back.

“So tell me, what makes up the edges of the box?” Carmilla asked, arms crossed.

“Uhhh…”

She knit her brows together. The box wasn’t real, it was an idea. But Carmilla didn’t look like she was making a joke. 

“Exceptionally durable fiberglass?”

“Language.” 

She wrote in big red letters “Sprache” on the top of the picture and drew an arrow to the edges of the box, which she then highlighted in her red marker. 

“All the words you’re taught from the day you’re born make up how you think about the world. Example: think of a new word, right now, that doesn’t resemble any word you know,” she said. 

“I can’t.”

“Exactly.” 

Carmilla looked ridiculously too bright for someone who was smirking. Laura must have looked as confused as she felt but Carmilla didn’t budge until suddenly, something inside her snapped and she let out a squeak. 

“I get it!” she said, jumping up. “It’s like how Inuit cultures have like 40 different words for snow and we’re just like ‘it’s snow’ or in South America they have colors of blue we never even heard of.”

Still smiling, Carmilla nodded. She leaned forward and pressed a firm kiss to Laura’s forehead. 

“I knew all that vlogging couldn’t have totally melted that brain.”

Carmilla went back to lounging on her bed with Laura’s copy of the reading while Laura copied down the picture into her own notebook. In her version, two stick figures (one with fangs) were holding hands and she replaced “sprache” with “language.” 

“I’m going to assume that word means ‘language’,” Laura said. 

“It does indeed, Lois Lane.”

Laura set her notebook down and grabbed the tub of cookies from her desk. She got up and offered one to Carmilla. 

“Is all this stuff down in your notes?” Laura said. Carmilla nodded, cookie in mouth and eyes on the page. 

“I know you get all _Land der Berge, Land am Strome_ sometimes but maybe write a few of them down in English?” 

Carmilla shoved the book close to her face and Laura knew if she had the ability to feel blood pressure or adrenaline then her face would be beat red right now and Laura frowned. 

“Sure thing.” 

\--

As informative as it had been the first time, Laura was getting less and less out of Carmilla’s attempts to parrot back the lecture to her. For one, she verbally translated her notes to Laura (kind of) but continued to scribble only in German, which wouldn’t be so annoying if it wasn’t for a few other notes from various classes Carmilla dragged herself to were in English from Laura’s fleeting glance at them. 

Laura’s first thought was that Carmilla didn’t want her to copy her. Which was odd for a multitude of reasons which included Carmilla very vocally “not giving one fuck” about class, their nightly three hour study sessions, and Carmilla’s once, not-so-vague flirtation that she would change Laura’s grade in a heartbeat if she could. 

So what was it then? 

Carmilla being passed out during the day did have its advantages sometimes, as did Carmilla’s tendency to be a fairly heavy sleeper. Around noon, while Carmilla was probably well into her second REM cycle, Laura did the unthinkable and began pawing through her roommate’s bag. 

It was completely unethical and it took her all morning to convince herself what she was doing was fine. She wasn’t hunting for suspicious texts from girls or going through her emails or making sure she was Carmilla’s best friend on Snapchat, she was simply looking for a way to make sure she didn’t flunk out of her class.   
No harm. And Carmilla’s tendency to be a stubborn ass sometimes drove her to this extreme 

She spotted the red notebook claimed on the front cover in silver Sharpie with “The Right Honorable Mircalla Countess of Karnstein” and Laura rolled her eyes a little bit as she slid it out carefully from the worn out Ramones backpack. 

She tiptoed out of the room, dodging the creaky board at the head of her bed, and slipped out the door and into the hallway. She padded it down the hall to Perry’s door where she knocked three times, two seconds later LaFontaine opened the door. 

“Oh good, LaFontaine, you can help to,” Laura said, letting herself in past them. 

Laura practically shoved the notebook in Perry’s face as she felt herself begin to sweat. 

“Sorry to barge in but I really need your help and I’m starting to feel really guilty because I’m a bad girlfriend who goes through my girlfriend’s stuff and it’s not because I’m jealous or anything, I just really need help in my one class—“

“Whoa,” LaFontaine said, placing a hand on Laura’s shoulder. “Slow down.”

“Sorry, I just.” She groaned. “I really can’t get the hang of this philosophy class and Carmilla gets it and tries to explain it to me but it’s basically like sitting in lecture all over again and I can’t even look at her notes because they’re all in German and she refuses to write in something I can understand and I think if I just get a copy in English I’d get it so much better.”

She took a breath. 

“So I was wondering, if you guys could help me out.”

She let out one final sigh and collapsed on Perry’s bed in a headache. LaFontaine came over and sat on the bed next to her. 

“So you rummaged through the 300 year old, predatorial killer’s stuff just to get homework notes?” they said. “That’s very close to metal standards of hardcore.”

“While I don’t condone stealing from your roommate, I am certainly not going to pass up an opportunity to give you help on a completely normal problem for once,” Perry said, flipping open the notebook until she located the divider marked “Philosophy.” 

“Okay let’s see,” she said, pulling out her own notebook and pencil. She began writing about a sentence or two before she stopped and furrowed her brows. 

“What?” Laura said. 

“I—well it’s just, LaFontaine could you just…”

LaFontaine joined her on the bed and looked over the notebook. They mumbled under their breath, reciting the German before stopping. Their eyebrows matched Perry’s in confusion, until something struck LaFontaine and their face got suddenly pale. 

“Oh,” they said. 

“What? Please tell me I’m going to pass philosophy because I think I might actually have a stroke if I think about flunking out of another class,” Laura said. 

“No, it’s not that. It’s umm,” LaFontaine looked quite uncomfortable. “Laura, I think, I mean I’m obviously not an expert but, based on what I’m seeing here…I think Carmilla might be dyslexic.”

In hindsight, Laura felt very bad about her first reaction, which was a snort and a laugh and asking LaFontaine to repeat themselves. When LaFontaine didn’t smile, Laura realized they were serious. 

“Wait, you think Carmilla is dyslexic? Carmilla?” Laura said. “She’s like…” Like what? She was a person, who reads, and writes, and eats, and sleeps. Even if her habits were slightly askew of normal. And suddenly Laura felt a lead ball wax in her stomach. 

And then she felt very ashamed. 

“But she reads like five books a week,” Laura said.

“Yeah, she’s dyslexic, not illiterate,” LaFontaine said. 

Laura felt her face go red. What even was dyslexia? Something about words getting rearranged on the page. She got tested for it along with every other kid on her first day of school when she was five. Since then she’d given it zero thought because, why should she?

“I just, I don’t know. I never thought something as small that would…” 

“I think that’s why she tried to hide it from you.”

_Tried to…Oh crap._

Of course that’s what she’d been doing. She wrote down things in a language Laura couldn’t read to hide just how wrong the sentences had been. And suddenly Laura went from awful girlfriend, to worst girlfriend ever: she went in Carmilla’s things, stole her notebook, laughed at the idea she could possibly be afflicted with a normal (human) problem, and she made a huge ass of herself for getting made at all the ways Carmilla tried to prevent the above from happening. 

Laura groaned into her palms.

“Yeah so, there’s that,” LaFontaine said, awkwardly closing the notebook and setting it down. 

“Well, it’s not as bad as we’re making it seem,” Perry said, capping her pen. “It’s just words right? A little rearranging is easy to proof read, we’ll look at her assignments before she turns them in.”

“It’s slightly more complicated than that, Perr,” LaFontaine said. “It manifests in words yeah, but it affects working memory, rapid naming. We’re not really sure what causes it still, it might be a function problem or structural problem in the brain but, it can be frustrating for people. And embarrassing.” 

_Great_. Laura groaned again. 

\--

When Laura returned to the room she practically jumped for joy that Carmilla was still asleep in her bed. She’d shifted positions, but the roll of her eyes underneath her lids told Laura she was fast asleep still. 

Carefully, Laura replaced the notebook as close to the original position as she could get it and dropped back into her computer chair. She watched Carmilla as she slept. She was very tiny, even with her tendency to sprawl out across a bed (that made it incredibly uncomfortable to try and nestle into a twin bed with her). She didn’t breathe while awake but in her sleep her stomach rose and fell gracefully. 

Laura never asked about it because she could guess. Just because Carmilla didn’t have to breath didn’t mean the muscle memory was gone, and her sleep, Carmilla was more honest than she’d ever be in life.

Laura scooted her chair close to the bed, close enough to move some wayward bangs out of Carmilla’s face, her eyeliner still perfectly applied and un-smudged by the pillow. Her Metallica shirt from last night was still on and even her combat boots. 

Scooting down the length of the bed, Laura carefully unlaced the shoes, one at a time and deposited the on the floor. And even though Carmilla was incapable of truly experiencing cold, she pulled the blanket up to her chin, tucking it in softly at her shoulders. 

Carmilla was trying to be human. 

She was struggling to climb her way back to what she used to be. Perhaps she was desperate to feel the thumping in her chest that Laura felt every time they kissed. What if she wanted to sweat again or to be able to shiver?

A common cognitive disorder, perhaps, made Carmilla feel closer to that goal.   
And Laura making her out to be some sort of immortal superhero, in capable of such a dilemma, didn’t help. 

“Like what you see, cupcake?” came a drowsy voice, despite Carmilla’s eyes still being closed. 

“I thought you were asleep,” Laura said, resting her arms and head on the edge of the mattress. 

“Do you often like to perch over me while I sleep?” she said, yawning and opening her eyes. 

“No, I was just thinking.”

Carmilla nestled her head into her pillow and took long blinks in an attempt to keep from falling right back asleep.

“Dare I ask?”

“I love you.”

Despite how soft it was, Carmilla caught it and kept her eyes open, raising an eyebrow and sitting up, ever so slightly, still bleary-eyed. 

“Everything okay?” she said. 

“Yeah, it’s perfect. Actually. Do you think you have room for one more?”

Carmilla sighed and shifted in towards the wall as Laura crawled into bed right beside her. They lay curled up and facing each other. Carmilla was fighting of sleep like her life depended on it but Laura let her fingers graze down her cheeks, pushing back hair or simply just lingering and it was like a lullaby. 

Laura leaned forward and placed a light kiss on the tip of Carmilla’s nose, earning one last, dreary look from her before Carmilla’s eyes closed not to open for at least three more hours. 

And Laura realized that maybe this, right here, is what made Carmilla so desperate to be mortal again. And, at the same time, was the exact thing that made her feel human at all.


End file.
